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Yale Environment 360
How an El Niño-Driven Drought Brought Hunger to Southern Africa
Esnart Chongani boils five small pumpkins over firewood outside her home in Makoka, a village in Zambia’s Chongwe District, not far from the capital, Lusaka. She tests to make sure they’re tender, drains the water, which she will save for later, and then carefully divides them into 12 portions as her family sits down for lunch. It’s a healthy dish, but there’s scarcely enough to go around, and this is the only meal any of them will eat today.
How Airborne Dust Is Helping the Southern Ocean Soak Up Our Emissions
A new study reveals the extent to which airborne dust is fueling plankton blooms that absorb our emissions. In total, the world’s oceans take up around a third of our carbon emissions, and of that, the Southern Ocean absorbs the lion’s share. Most of the carbon dioxide simply dissolves into the water, but some is consumed by phytoplankton. When plankton die, they sink deep into the ocean, locking away carbon for decades or centuries.
How a Small Herd of Romanian Bison Is Locking Away Millions of Tons of Carbon
A new study finds that a small herd of bison that was recently reintroduced to the Carpathian mountains is helping to draw down a huge volume of carbon. Gone from Romania for 200 years, European bison were restored to the Țarcu Mountains at the southern end of the Carpathian range in 2014. Now numbering 170, the herd is reshaping the mountain landscape in ways that are helping clean up emissions.
In Seawater, Researchers See an Untapped Bounty of Critical Metals
Can metals that naturally occur in seawater be mined, and can they be mined sustainably? A company in Oakland, California, says yes. And not only is it extracting magnesium from ocean water — and from waste brine generated by industry — it is doing it in a carbon-neutral way. Magrathea Metals has produced small amounts of magnesium in pilot projects, and with financial support from the U.S. Defense Department, it is building a larger-scale facility to produce about 200 tons of the metal a year. By 2028, it says it plans to be operating a facility that will annually produce more than 11,000 tons.
Last Summer Was the Hottest in More Than 2,000 Years
The summer of 2023 was the hottest summer in the Northern Hemisphere since the height of the Roman Empire, a new study finds. While scientists had already determined that last summer was the hottest on record, modern record-keeping only dates back to the 19th century. For the new study, researchers wanted to look back further into the past.
In Wet Winter, LA Captured Enough Stormwater to Supply One in Four People
Since October, Los Angeles County has gathered enough stormwater to meet the demand of one in four residents for a year. Uncommonly heavy rains allowed the county to capitalize on its billion-dollar investment in storage infrastructure. Since 2001, local officials have raised dams and cleared sediment from reservoirs in an...
Coal and Gas Supplied Just 21 Percent of the EU’s Power Last Month
Together, coal and gas generated 21 percent of electricity in the EU last month, a new low that reflects the rapid adoption of renewable power. The buildout of wind and solar in Europe is continuing apace, while hydropower is recovering from an extended drought. Together, these sources produced 49 percent of the EU’s electricity in April, according to data from the think tank Ember. “The records set in April are the latest evidence of a long-term trend of increasing clean generation and falling emissions in the EU,” analysts wrote.
Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger
Investigative journalism can be a very deep dive. By the end of his probe into the supply chain of JBS, the world’s largest meat processing and packing company, Marcel Gomes reckons he and his team at the São Paulo-based nonprofit Repórter Brasil knew more about the origins of the beef it supplies from the Amazon to the world’s hamburger chains and supermarkets than the company itself.
In a Dammed and Diked Mekong, a Push to Restore the Flow
We depart from Can Tho, the bustling heart of Vietnam’s Mekong River delta, before sunrise, heading south to an aquaculture farm in coastal Cà Mau province. The farm, I’m told, showcases how farmers in the delta are preserving scarce freshwater during the intensely hot dry season. A...
Offset Schemes Failing to Benefit Forest Communities, Report Finds
Increasingly, businesses are writing off their carbon emissions by funding the conservation of forests. A new report finds that while such schemes have made “limited” progress in curbing deforestation, they have largely failed to alleviate poverty in forest communities. “We are too late on in the game to...
Chorus of Whale Song Signals Antarctic Blue Whales May Be Making a Comeback
A nearly two-decade study of whale songs recorded in the Southern Ocean suggests that blue whales, the largest creatures ever to have roamed the Earth, may be recovering in Antarctica after being hunted to the edge of extinction. Commercial whaling reduced the number of Antarctic blue whales from around 125,000...
Attacks on Environmental Journalists Growing Worldwide, UN Report Finds
A new U.N. report warns that environmental journalists across the globe are facing growing violence and intimidation. “Without reliable scientific information about the ongoing environmental crisis, we can never hope to overcome it,” said Audrey Azoulay, head of UNESCO, the U.N. agency behind the report. “And yet the journalists we rely on to investigate this subject and ensure information is accessible face unacceptably high risks all over the world, and climate-related disinformation is running rampant on social media.”
How One South African Community Stopped Shell Oil in Its Tracks
For nearly a decade, Nonhle Mbuthuma has traveled with a bodyguard. The founder of the Amadiba Crisis Committee — a local group formed to fight a proposed titanium mine along South Africa’s Wild Coast — Mbuthuma has long had the support of many in rural Pondoland’s Xolobeni community. But opponents have demonized her as an arch enemy of all economic development, and some have been encouraged to believe that if Mbuthuma “disappeared,” they would get rich.
U.S. Saw Drop in Wind Power Last Year, Despite New Turbines
For the first time since the mid-1990s, U.S. wind power production dropped in 2023, according to government figures. The slump is the result of weak winds in the Midwest, and it comes despite the continued buildout of wind turbines nationally. In 2023, the total amount of power U.S. turbines could...
Will Indonesia’s New Regime Mark the End of Gains for Its Forests?
Indonesia, the world’s fourth most-populous country with the third largest surviving area of tropical forests, has a new strongman president. Environmentalists are concerned. They fear that, after a decade during which the country’s deforestation rates have fallen by almost two-thirds, Prabowo Subianto will unleash a new ecological orgy, cutting, burning, and despoiling some of the world’s greatest rainforests.
Climate Change Intensified 2021 Pacific Northwest Heat Wave, Study Finds
Climate change made the disastrous 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest larger and longer-lasting than it would have been otherwise, a new study finds. From June 18 to July 14 of 2021, high pressure trapped heat over the region, forming a “heat dome.” For 27 days, the mercury regularly surpassed 100 degrees F (38 degrees C), at one point reaching 121.3 degrees F (49.6 degrees C) in British Columbia, the hottest temperature ever recorded in Canada. In total, the heat wave killed more than 1,400 people in the U.S. and Canada.
Dire Straits: Can a Fishing Ban Save the Elusive European Eel?
Long, V-shaped eel traps cross from shore to shore on Italy’s Comacchio Lagoons, pointing like arrowheads out to the Adriatic Sea. When eels headed to their ocean breeding grounds arrive at the tip of the V, aluminum panels allow them into the trap, but not out. Metal replaced wood and reeds in the 1980s, but otherwise the design of the trap is the same as it has been since ancient times.
U.K. Closing In on Zero-Carbon Power Goal
Wind and solar are continuing to push fossil fuels off the U.K. power grid. So far this year, wind is the nation’s leading source of electricity, and for brief periods, the island of Great Britain has scarcely needed coal or natural gas. For one hour on April 15, fossil...
Can Aging U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Withstand More Extreme Weather?
To reach its climate goals, the Biden administration aims to extend the lives of U.S. nuclear reactors. But a new report finds regulators have not studied whether increasingly extreme weather could threaten the safety or viability of power plants largely built in the 1970s and 1980s. On August 10, 2020...
Scientists Are Trying to Coax the Ocean to Absorb More CO2
Last May in Grundartangi, a small port in western Iceland, a barge piled high with wood chips began making regular trips to a patch of ocean 190 miles from the coast. By September, almost 20,000 tons — about 1,400 dump trucks’ worth — of “wood waste” had been pushed overboard. This was no attempt to clandestinely offload trash into the sea. Instead, it was one of the latest efforts in the race to rid the atmosphere of excess carbon dioxide.
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Yale Environment 360 is an online magazine offering opinion, analysis, reporting, and debate on global environmental issues.
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